All major photographic icons bear its share of mythology. But there are others in that mythology has shifted to the black legend. Why Kevin Carter did not help the girl to escape the vulture? It is not easy to be imposed on the legends, and more when they have the color black of death.

The South African photographer Kevin Carter visited by plane the village in Sudan called Ayod in 1993 to denounce the war, and famine suffering the country. Before leaving, he saw a malnourished baby lying on the sand right in the same plane as a vulture, two powerful symbols that represented the best metaphor for what happened in that place at that moment, one of the most important humanitarian catastrophes of the century XX. In fact, the girl was not faint, but was in the typical posture of defecating outside their village and a vulture lurking. Carter, who observed the scene, took the photo. He waited to take a better photo, with the vulture spreading its wings, but could not. According to him, she managed to recover and continue their journey.

Carte left Ayod knowing he had taken a great photograph and it was. The New York Times published it days later with an effect that he did not know. Public opinion turned against him for not doing anything to save the child from the claws of this vulture threatening, even accused of being the real photo scavenger. A year later, in 1994, he won the Pulitzer Prize and committed suicide.

Hundreds of publications on the Internet explain Carter’s suicide was because he could not overcome the guilt of not helping the girl. Everything is a lie, and his suicide had nothing to do with it.

No one saw the death of that baby and is the very image that denies the tragic destiny, at least in part, because the creature in the picture carries in his right hand a plastic bracelet food station of the UN, installed in there. Looking at the high resolution picture can be read, written in blue marker, the code “T3”.

Florence Mourin coordinated the work at the makeshift clinic: “It used two letters” T “for severe malnutrition and” S “, for which only needed supplementary feeding. The number indicates the order of arrival at the feed center.” This means that Kong had severe malnutrition, was the third to reach the center, she recovered, survived famine, the vulture and the worst omen for Western readers.

Carter was criticized for not helping the girl and the world gave up for dead even though Carter himself did not see her die, just took the picture and left minutes later. The reality is she was already registered in the central food in French nurses attending the NGO Doctors of the World.

With that premise, and the possibility that the creature still alive in spite of famine and war, a team traveled to Ayod 18 years later to reconstruct the history of that photograph.

After several meetings with dozens of villagers, a woman handing out food in that place 18 years ago named Mary Nyaluak gave the first clue to the whereabouts of the mysterious creature. “It’s a boy and not a girl. Kong Nyong is called, and lives outside the village.”

Two days later, that track would lead to the child’s family, whose father identified and confirmed that little child was recovered of that famine but died four years ago of “fevers”.